You lot are handy with information and thought I'd ask.
I'm going into second year for my BA degree and I'm 25 so I'll be around 28 when I graduate. I read somewhere that the older you get, the less chance you have! I know I'll be older, but I'm hoping that someone will see past that and see that I've not been sitting around doing nothing! xD
There are fewer roles available for older women but I don't think drama schools mind taking mature students at all. It depends - as an actor you can work until you fall off the perch/can't remember your lines - it's a bit different for a dancer where careers are shorter and starting young is likely to be important.
The schools love what they term as 'mature learners' - the only thing with this industry is the purpose of the MA - are you going to do it for educational purposes or something else, because I'm not sure it impacts on getting jobs at all. I suspect you would never pay for it with extra work. If on the other hand you want the MA to get a deeper understanding of the acting process for another reason, great. It means longer before you start at the bottom - and depending on what you want to do, can you wait that long before actually doing the job for real?
Ideally, I'm doing it to get a better understanding of acting. I'm hoping that, even though it's taken me longer to get started, the MA will show that I have patience and am willing to take the time to learn. It might take me longer, but if I work hard enough, maybe it'll pay off?
The university I'm on is giving me the basics, but mostly theory so far.
If you want to act then I would advise looking at the one year accredited courses (or two years if you could afford them). E.g. DSL, OSD, ArtsED, E15,RWCM, BSA (the full list is on the www.ncdt.co.uk website). These have been assessed as providing training suitable for the profession and are entirely practical. Funding is difficult of course, though I do know that Oxford offers DaDA funding for its one year course. I understand that there are plans to replace/revamp the Dance and Drama Awards scheme, so it's something to keep an eye on.
I don''t think anyone with acting jobs to fill will be interested in an M.A. particularly, though they may be interested in where you trained. I've only ever been asked for evidence of my acting training for non-acting jobs...
I don't know if things have changed in the past 10 years but a teacher friend, who qualified with a cert ed (when they did them) was a teacher for 10 years, then he changed careers and became a police officer for another 10. He then went back into teaching as a deputy head and did hid MA (part time) so that he could apply for the headship (which he got). He didn't have a BA/Bsc!
That's correct - there are so many routes into teaching - graduates often used the PGCE and non-graduates the Cert Ed as the entry to teaching - and still do. The tricky bit being that in order to do the PGCE/Cert Ed you must have guaranteed teaching hours. Colleges who have lots of hourly paid staff can offer this, where as schools can't - so they have their own schemes where you are sort of more than a learning support person and less than the teacher, and work alongside them. In colleges (which is how I did mine) you are the teacher - because your industry skills are what they really want. You get the 'officialness' of the PGCE/CertEd along the way. Trouble is, this course is dreadfully dull, and centres around the theory which you then try out on your students. Then you take the results back to be analysed, so you do better next time. The best bit about these courses is the diversity of people you meet. Nowadays trainers in industry need proper teaching qualifications, so on mine, apart from people like me there were oil rig captains, hairdressers, nurses, policemen, dance teachers, prison officers and even a whiskey blender!
The most interesting part of the course was when we got to the bit about being able to teach out of your own comfort zone. We each had to teach somebody else's specialism and kind of do it well enough to get away with it. I think we all learned a lot from these sessions. The school system is similar, but everyone are teachers in schools. If you look carefully at educational MAs, by far the most popular is business management - which is what heads really need, because that's what they really are - the Managing Director of a multi-million pound business. The other kinds of MAs need full-time attendance which if you are working is difficult. OU MAs are very popular for education people as they use their work as the foundation for their work and research. MAs are heavy on research, analysis and evaluation and light on 'doing things' - hence why they are not for everyone.
I know I'll be older, but I'm hoping that someone will see past that and see that I've not been sitting around doing nothing! xD
